By Joel Denker
The tropical drink, brownish in color with a woody, tart taste, was exhilarating. I sipped a tamarindo, which I had taken home from El Tamarindo, the Adams-Morgan Salvadoran eatery, and mused about the evergreen shade tree and the mysterious fruit from which the juice for my cooling refresco had been squeezed.
The tamarind tantalized me. I had encountered tamarind chutney in Indian restaurants and was discovering that Central American immigrants had brought their taste for the fruit with them to Washington. Every Salvadoran restaurant seemed to list the tamarind drink on its menu. Was there a link between the Indian and Latin plants? Where did its intriguing name came from?
Deciphering the puzzle was pleasurable. I read through botanical treatises and cook books and gradually the outlines of the tamarind’s story began to emerge. A tree of ancient lineage, the tamarind was native to African savannahs whose semi-arid climate sustained it. It found its way to India and was given a name in Sanskrit. Arab and Persian traders probably found the tamarind on the subcontinent. The viscous fruit reminded them of preserved dates. Our English word flows from the Arabic, tamar-u’l-hind, or the date of India. The tamarind’s journey continued. It was planted in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, and other countries. The seeds were also taken to Latin America and the Caribbean, possibly by Spanish or Portuguese explorers.
The tall evergreen, which could grow to eighty feet, sprouted bean-shaped pods, which turned from green to brown when ripe. The plump pods bulged with a sticky pulp laced with seeds. The sour fruit tree was shrouded in myth. The English scientist, Sir George Watt, reported in 1908 that the tamarind frightened Indians. “The Natives have an aversion to sleeping under its shade because of the supposed acid exhalation from the leaves.” The threatening image lived on. In the 1974 film, The Tamarind Seed, Omar Sharif, who plays a Soviet military attache intent on seducing Julie Andrews, as an English woman visiting Barbados, warns her about the tree: “If the rains come, and you stand beneath them, the water will burn your skin.”
The fruit might not be decorous and the tree frightening but the tamarind endeared itself to tropical peoples. I talked with Betty Reyes, who runs the El Tamarindo restaurants with her husband, Jose, about its attraction (El Tamarindo, 1785 Florida Avenue, N.W., 328-3660; 4910 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., 244-8888.) The tamarind “refreshes your insides, your body,” she told me. It also “refreshes your organs.” She showed me a plastic package of the reddish brown pulp, shipped from the Dominican Republic, which is soaked, squeezed, and strained to draw out the liquid. The sweet-sour product is “natural and it’s nothing artificial.”
Tamarindo is the national drink of El Salvador. It’s “like lemonade,” Betty’s niece, Nora Alvarez, who manages the Wisconsin Avenue branch of the restaurant, observed. The tart fruit is also made into candy and converted to a syrup that is poured over ice.
The trees themselves abound in the Reyes’ homeland. Jose lived near a beach in the southern part of the country. The area was full of the shady evergreens. When the young Salvadoran pioneer opened his first restaurant in Washington, Betty said, he decided to call it El Tamarindo, the name of this “beautiful touristic place.”
If you’re like me and can’t imagine yourself squeezing the fibers and seeds out of the tamarind flesh, there are shortcuts. I found two brands of tamarind drink, Goya and Jumex, in the cooler at Pena’s Spanish Store (1636 17th Street, N.W., 462-2222). Jumex, a Mexican company that has a picture of the brown pods on its can, is the better of the two and a decent substitute if you can’t get to El Tamarindo. The store also carries frozen blocks of tamarind pulp. The young Guatemalan clerk, a tamarindo enthusiast, recommended the one with seeds for the fullest flavor. Pena’s also offers bottled tamarind concentrates, Delicias and Princesa, which are a quick way to make the refreshment.
Tamarind is more prominent in Indian than in Central American food. At Jyoti, an Indian dining spot, I savored a crunchy snack of rice puffs and lentil noodles invigorated with tamarind and coriander chutney (Jyoti, 2433 18th Street, N.W., 518-5892). The tamarind had been sweetened with a little sugar and sparked with cumin seeds. It lent this Bombay cereal called bhel puri a tangy flavor.
I sampled another chat (Hindi for snack), a lentil dumpling covered with white, dark brown, and green sauces—yogurt, tamarind, and coriander. Extra chutneys came with the bhel puri and the dahi bhalla, my second appetizer. I kept spooning more tamarind on my dishes, sating my appetite for the syrupy relish. I looked forward someday to trying Jyoti’s shrimp masala, a curry accented with tamarind.
Manageress Saba Tasneem, who hails from the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and I talked tamarind lore. She remembered eating the evergreen’s “sour leaves” when she was growing up. “When the new, very small leaves come out, we take them and cook them like spinach.”
I completed my tamarind education at the Burma, the only restaurant in the District featuring this cuisine and one of a small group of these establishments in the country (740 6th Street, N.W., 638-1280). A starter of perfectly cooked, lightly fried calabash, a Burmese squash, came with a blackish tamarind dipping sauce. Coriander leaves floated in the liquid, pungent from the addition of fish sauce, onion, garlic, and chili. The sharp condiment played off the tender taste of the battered vegetables.
I delighted in a main dish of tamarind fish, a sort of stew. Chunks of salmon had been cooked in a sauce of fresh tomatoes, onions, and peppers infused with sour tamarind.
Still perplexed about the tamarind, I turned to my hosts, Jane Tinpe and her son, John, for guidance. Why, I wondered, was the fruit so indispensable? The scarcity of citrus fruit, Jane explained, is part of the answer. “In the village most people don’t have either vinegar or lemon.” Tamarind filled the gap as a souring agent. For example, “any kind of salad we use tamarind,” she said. “We like sour as much as you like sugar,” Jane added.
I had one more nagging question. Why did the Burmese and others from tropical lands seem to crave sour flavors like tamarind. Jean’s response was simple and incisive: “You need sour things because of the weather.”
Originally published in The InTowner: http://intowner.com/food-in-the-hood/
